This year the public had the opportunity to see not only her
latest work, Sweet Mambo, premiered at Wuppertal in
May last year, but also her joyful Wiesenland, a piece
created after a visit to Budapest in 2000 and supposedly based
on the images and impressions received there. Gone is the
anguish, stress and frustration which marked so many of her
earlier productions. Wiesenland may well be spiked
through with symbols, from water representing purity and smoke
illustrating sin, while the troubling relationships between men
and women remain paramount, but frankly, who cared what it was
about if not life! The emotion came from the movement, from the
dancers' energy and vitality and from the humour running
through the work. And, taking cue from the banks of the river
Danube, the theme of water, in bottles, buckets and basins was
dominant. These were moments to be seen and enjoyed, a
mish-mash of crazy events crammed through and through with
glorious dance. For as well as being one of the most
influential avant-garde choreographers working in Europe,
Bausch is also a genius of movement and theatrical invention.

As the stage flooded with light and soft music played, a
smiling girl in a long evening dress carried a candlelit tray
around, offering tea to the audience. True, she got a bucket of
water poured over her head for her pains, but then the rest of
the women came on, for the most part in high-heeled shoes,
full-length dresses in pastel shades of satin and gloved hands,
each more feminine than the next, their long hair streaming
down, flattering and accentuating their movements. Under the
admiring eyes of a handsome youth, a girl in an off-white,
clinging satin dress climbed up a ladder to somewhere, and a
fast moving "fakir" appeared from thin air, and scuttled across
the stage to sit cross-legged to cook himself dinner on a small
granite stove. Elsewhere, a girl on a chair was lifted high in
the air by four strong young men.

In the midst of all this, a fancily dressed couple on their way
to a ball crossed the stageâ€¦ pushing a supermarket trolley. The
message was clear; there was no message. No story and no
meaning apart from an eternal need for love in a world filled
with chaos.

No dance as yet and no evident connection to the Hungarian
capital. There was just a strange and meaningless mess which
continued with couples quarrelling, people eating solitary
meals and generally walking on and off stage to no purpose.
Nothing had any rhyme or reason, until Dance arrived with a
vengeance.

Within seconds, loud music blared out, and the whole company
were twirling, dipping and bobbing, the women lifted way up
high by the men, before one broke away to perform a brilliantly
inventive solo, one of a whole series of many. The stage was
brimming with life, large and generous and full of colour.

The music ebbed away, to be replaced by a woman humming,
followed by softly whispered words accompanying the soft,
lovely solos. At one given moment, some six or seven women
raised their full skirts in half-circles, spinning around as
cartwheels.

Two dancers weaved their way gracefully between an increasing
pile of 10, 11 or maybe 12 chairs balanced precariously one on
top of another, chairs reaching to the sky, and lifting the
whole work into a poetic, luminous sphere of its own; The male
dancers came on one at a time, each dancing steps more
inventive than the next.

Dominique Mercy,
Pina Bausch's charismatic interpreter, who has worked with her
since the company was founded, was stupendous, creating that
special, fascinating aura of Bausch magic around him as he
moved. His entire body took possession of the stage in an
breathe-stopping solo where each movement was different,
delicate, no sequence of steps being ever repeated. A highly
expressive artist, air-borne, he moved with grace, lightness
and charm, leaving a silent audience choked with emotion.

Wiesenland is a work where the choreography is for
individuals; there was little, if any group dancing at all, for
when there were more than three dancers on stage, the action
turned towards slapstick or derision. Towards the end, it was
difficult to know where to turn one's eyes, on a spectacular
solo of pure invention, on an attractive woman in a green
off-the-shoulder evening dress who was miming fun conversations
with responsive members of the audience, horrified to discover
one spectator was there alone, or on a near-naked duo taking a
bath in a tub that was too small for them. By the time I
noticed them, they were taking a shower under a watering can
precariously balanced on top of a chair. Apparently, we learned
afterwards, they were totally naked, but the action elsewhere
was so mesmerizing that no one in the audience noticed until it
was too late to verify!

Musical collaboration: Matthias Burkert and Andreas
Eisenschneider

Patricia Boccadoro writes on dance in Europe. She has
contributed to The Guardian, The Observer and Dancing Times and
was dance consultant to the BBC Omnibus documentary on Rudolf
Nureyev. Ms. Boccadoro is the dance editor for
Culturekiosque.com